Xiaomeng Cui
Published: 2018
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This dissertation examines the impact of and adaptation to environmental change in the agricultural sector. Persistent changes in environmental factors could induce adaptive behavior in the long run. The first chapter examines how climate change affects cropping patterns in the United States since the 1980s. To identify long-run effects of climate change with a county-level panel, a “rolling- panel” approach is used, in which annual climatic variables are constructed by averaging growing- season temperature and precipitation over the past 30 years. Planted acres of corn and soybeans are positively affected by increases in temperature and precipitation in cool and dry areas, but negatively affected in warm and moist areas. The chapter further explores responsive margins of induced acreage changes, including adjustments of cropland conversion and acreage substitution. In addition to trends in rising temperature and changing precipitation patterns, more frequent and severe weather events are also expected in the future. The second chapter focuses on the effects of weather shocks, especially extreme weather events, on crop abandonment in the United States. Using novel measures of weather events, the chapter finds that concurrent hot and dry days as well as dry and wet spells significantly increase the proportion of unharvested corn and soybean acreage. Further analysis provides some evidence that counties with more land enrolled in the Federal crop insurance program tend to be more susceptible to weather shocks. Another dimension of environmental change is air pollution. The third chapter examines the effects of a particular air pollutant, surface ozone, on agricultural production. The chapter focuses on China, which is one of the most heavily polluted nations on earth and is also the largest agricul- tural producer. Using observational data at the county level, the chapter examines nonlinearities in the relationship between rice yields and ozone concentrations and find exposures to extremely high-level ozone concentrations damage rice yields, especially during the panicle-formation pe- riod. Heightened surface ozone levels will potentially lead to reductions in China’s rice yields that are large enough to have implications for the global rice market.